Toronto Film Festival highlights promising actors

The Toronto International Film Festival is spotlighting the most likely Canadian actors to break out onto world cinema screens in 2011. TIFF co-director Cameron Bailey announced the launch of the festival’s “Rising Star” program to discover Canada-based international acting talent.

Four actors will be showcased at the festival’s 36th edition in September, with TIFF vouching for their ability to expand their film careers beyond Canada to the world. TIFF will also be choosing actors who would be equally at home on screens in Bollywood, the U.K. or Hong Kong as in Hollywood. The festival initiative will include intensive professional development for the four actors with casting directors, agents, managers, publicists and filmmakers.

Cineplex Announces Three New TheatresCineplex Entertainment announced plans to develop new entertainment complexes in Abbotsford, British Columbia; Edmonton, Alberta; and Chatham, Ontario. Each theatre location will feature digital and RealD 3D technology.

Each location will include an UltraAVX auditorium, offering a significantly larger screen, Dolby Digital 7.1 surround sound, extra-wide high-back rocker seats and reserved seating. There are currently 11 UltraAVX locations across Canada.

Approximately 43,000 square feet, Cineplex Odeon Abbotsford and VIP Cinemas will feature 11 screens and 1,950 seats. The first newly built theatre in British Columbia to offer VIP cinemas, it is scheduled to begin construction in the fall of 2011 with an opening in spring 2012. The theatre is being built as part of the new Highstreet lifestyle centre, a retail development featuring several top retailers.

Cineplex VIP Cinemas provide an exclusive box office and concession stand, a private licensed lounge, and in-theatre reserved seating featuring premium oversized seats. In-seat service for concession items is also available, with food and beverages delivered to the customer’s seat.

Cineplex Odeon Windermere and VIP Cinemas is an 11-screen, 1,950 seat theatre which will feature three VIP Cinemas, an UltraAVX auditorium and an XSCAPE Entertainment Centre. Located in the Currents of Windermere in Southwest Edmonton, it is scheduled to begin construction in spring 2011 with an opening in fall 2011.

Galaxy Cinemas Chatham will be a 26,000-square-foot complex with seven-screens and 1,372 seats, and the first UltraAVX auditorium to be offered in Southwestern Ontario. It is scheduled to begin construction in spring 2011 with an opening in fall 2011.Quebec’s Incendies in Oscar RaceQuebec director Denis Villeneuve‘s Incendies is a nominee in the Academy Awards Foreign-Language category, competing against Algeria’s Outside the Law, Denmark’s In a Better World, Greece’s Dogtooth and Mexico’s Biutiful.

Incendies is based on the award-winning play of the same name by Lebanese-born Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad, and stars Maxim Gaudette and Melissa Désormeaux-Poulin as twins who fulfill their mother’s dying wish to travel to the Middle East to deliver letters to a father that they thought was dead and to a brother they didn’t know existed. The drama was named best Canadian film at both the Toronto and Vancouver film festivals this past fall. Captain Canuck Eyes Big ScreenComic artist Richard Comely, who launched Canada’s only superhero comic strip in 1975, is ready to sign a deal with a major Canadian producer to shoot a CA$15 million live-action movie based on his Captain Canuck character.

Captain Canuck will be shot in Canada, highlighting famous landmarks like the CN Tower and possibly Niagara Falls, as well as in other foreign locations according to the specifics of the script. At various times in its history, producers have wanted to create animated films or TV series based on the famed Canadian crime-fighter. The character is a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer turned intelligence agent named Tom Evans.